Racism's cruelest cut: coercive sterilisation of Romani women and their fight for justice in the Czech Republic (1966-2016)

A government-sponsored eugenics programme in Czechoslovakia sterilised Roma women without their knowledge; though the programme may be dead, the struggle for justice and recognition continues.

"Sterilise cucumbers not women" placard at a Roma women's protest. Photo used with permission of authors. All rights reserved.

“After ten days in hospital, I was given
some forms and told that I should go to see a social worker with them in order
to get some money. I had no idea what the money was for, I thought it was for
having my stitches done twice, but the social worker told me that I was
sterilised. I didn’t know what it meant so she explained it to me, and also that
they are not giving money for it anymore. I had to take it normally, what other
option did I have? I was totally dumbfounded, that they’ve done that [...]
Without saying a word.”

In
1992, twenty-six-year-old Jana from the Czech city of Ostrava, was told two
days after her C-section delivery that she needed another surgery because she
had “loose stitches which needed to be fixed”. Without her knowledge or
consent, she was sterilised during this procedure.

Jana’s
testimony is just one featured in a new report by the European Roma Rights
Centre, which gives voice to Romani women who describe the shocking and
chillingly routine abuses they endured as victims of coercive sterilisation;
the physical, social and psychological impacts on their lives; and their role
as courageous activists in the fight for justice and reproductive rights.

The
women’s testimonies provide poignant and emotive context to a detailed account
of the institutional and legal settings that permitted a regime of cruelty,
deception and intimidation to inflict irreparable damage upon individual Romani
women and communities – a racist regime that even survived the transition from
dictatorship to democracy.

Sterilisation
policy “directly and solely motivated by eugenics”

The
practice of coercive sterilisation that targeted Romani women was legally
sanctioned by a 1971 decree in communist Czechoslovakia which gave public
authorities free rein to systematically sterilise women without full and
informed consent as a means of birth control.

This was boosted in 1979 by a
government program of financial incentives for Romani women, motivated by the
need “to control the highly unhealthy Roma population through family planning
and contraception.” The Sterilisation Directive was abolished in 1993, but the
practice of sterilising Romani women without their consent continued throughout
the 1990s and the 2000s, with the last known case occurring as recently as
2007.

Activists
and signatories of Charter 77 voiced the first public criticism of this state
policy. In a 1978 report entitled “The Situation of the Gypsies Roma in
Czechoslovakia”, they claimed that the sterilisation of Romani women was a
“planned administrative policy” and that “at internal meetings the success of
social workers is assessed by the number of Romani women whom they have
convinced to undergo the sterilisation.” Their field research concluded that
hundreds of Romani women in Czechoslovakia had undergone the procedure in
breach of the 1971 Sterilisation Directive and nobody was held responsible for
this violation of the law.

A system
buttressed by intimidation, coercion and deception

The
most fearsome embodiment of this system that emerges in the testimonies of
Romani women from the town of Most was the social worker given the pseudonym “Ms.
Marcová.” She deployed a range of coercive methods to force women to undergo
sterilisation and subjected them to constant harassment.

She would threaten
them with taking their children into state care, jailing their husbands for
missing a day’s work, cutting their cash benefits or putting them on vouchers;
women recalled that she would visit their homes up to three times a day to
check if they were taking proper care of their households and children.

She
was perceived in the Romani neighbourhood of Chánov as the powerful agent of
the state. So zealous and systemic was Marcová in her efforts to sterilise
Romani women that many felt she was driven by anti-Roma prejudice. As Olga put
it:

“They
[non-Roma] wanted us to become extinct, not to have any more children. She didn’t
like the Roma people, but she knew each one of us, by name, she came straight
to the flat, didn’t even have to knock or ask for permission.”

Hana
likened here to a member of the Gestapo: “she acted like she was omnipotent.
She was walking around in her black coat, black walking shoes [...] the white
band around her arm, papers in her hands, I can see her as clearly as if she
was in front of me right now. She was blonde and walking around Chánov as if
she was walking in a concentration camp, we were lucky we were not numbered
like the prisoners, but it didn’t matter so much, because she knew all about
us.”

As
Olga described it, Marcová’s detailed knowledge of each of the ‘socially
vulnerable’ Roma families meant she knew their weak points, “who lives badly,
who lives well”. She offered money for sterilisation to some, to others not,
she knew precisely when and where she could interfere: “There were moments when
she was really evil and mean and nobody dared to oppose her, because she was
threatening with those above and she also knew everyone, at school, at the
police station, in hospital - all was prepared, when you got there.”

Allegedly,
in addition to threats, Marcová routinely lied about the temporary nature of
sterilisations. She convinced some Romani women that the effect of the
procedure would wear off after five or so years.

Marcová
also features in what was perhaps the most extreme case of women who were
completely unaware they were being sterilised. In 1977, at the age of 16, Nora
was hospitalised with a miscarriage. She was under the legal guardianship of
her parents due to having been previously diagnosed with a mental disability.
Marcová recommended that Nora should be sterilised and promised them a
financial payment if they agreed. Neither the parents, nor the social worker,
nor medical personnel felt any need to inform Nora about the sterilisation.

Henrieta
was another woman who was sterilised completely without her knowledge. This
occurred in 2001, a full eight years after the 1971 Directive and the 1988
Decree were officially abolished. She was only informed when she took her
newborn for a compulsory check-up, and the doctor checked through her file.

Even
within the abusive context of the Czech Republic, Henrieta’s case defies
understanding – she had used contraception for 13 years, after which she and
her partner decided to have another child. Throughout her pregnancy she
regularly checked in with her gynaecologist.

There were no complications or
health problems, and no legitimate reason for medical personnel or social
workers to intervene - but intervene they did - and in a gross violation of her
reproductive rights, they sterilised her while she was giving birth. The
interviews revealed that Romani women like Henrieta were in the most vulnerable
position: by being ‘responsible’ with regards to family planning and child
care, and visiting their doctors regularly, they became easy targets for
involuntary sterilisation, even after it ceased to be a state policy.

A theatre performance by the affected women. Photo by Tomáš Rafa. All rights reserved.

The long battle
for redress

A
report by the Czech Ombudsman published in 2005 concluded that the practice of
involuntary sterilisation up to 1991 was directly and solely motivated by
eugenics, and recommended that all women subjected to involuntary sterilisation
between 1972 and 1991 should be eligible for compensation.

In
2009 and 2012, the Czech Government’s Human Rights Council passed resolutions
recommending that the Czech Government introduce a mechanism for adequate
financial redress for victims of involuntary sterilisation. In February 2015,
the working group under the auspices of the Human Rights Ministry finalised a
Compensation Act proposal.

In
September 2015 the government rejected adopting this law without stating
official reasons. In his reply to the concerns of the Council of Europe
Commissioner for Human Rights over the rejected bill, the Prime Minister Sobotka
maintained that the state did not support practices of systemic sterilisation and
had adopted all necessary measures to prevent any further incidents of
involuntary sterilisation. Despite the legal evidence that the statute of limitation
expired in all cases, Sobotka recommended all previously harmed women to seek
justice through the Czech courts.

This
three-year statute of limitation, dating from the moment that it is
acknowledged that the sterilisation occurred, prevents the majority of victims
from bringing civil claims for damages and is the main obstacle to justice. The
report provides an in-depth account of the Czech state’s determination to deny justice
and the right to seek compensation through domestic civil remedies to the
majority of victims of involuntary sterilisation. The Czech state is still not
being held properly to account for its past systemic human rights violations
against Romani women.

The struggle
for justice continues

Through
the women’s testimonies comes a sense of the insidious nature of this regime of
cruelty, how such a gross violation of reproductive rights came to seem almost
banal, and in the eyes of most non-Roma, completely acceptable. The women who
were interviewed from Most recalled that Marcová created an atmosphere of
inevitability and routine procedure concerning sterilisation and she always
ensured every logistic and administrative detail was taken care of in advance.

Looking back and judging herself rather than the abusive system that oppressed
them, Darina thought that they were all too young and stupid at that time, and
also too scared to oppose the suggestions of the social worker: “Today I would
stand up against her, today we know what she had done in Chánov, how many
families she had destroyed, I wouldn’t let that happen to me, if I knew what I
know now.”

And
that is perhaps what is unique about this report, for these women have stood up and fought back. One of
the objectives of the research was to create a nationwide platform for affected
Romani women to meet up and provide peer support in their call for
compensation. Many of the interviewed women from Ostrava were already veteran
campaigners as members of the “Group of Women Harmed by Involuntary
Sterilisation.”

Through
collective meetings and workshops, the research allowed Romani women to develop
a common understanding of the injustice suffered; consider effective ways to
advocate for compensation and better safeguards; and engage in
awareness-raising activities to inform and engage the wider public around this
issue.

In
one of the most creative interventions, four of the women used the testimonies
and the report as the raw material for a social theatre performance. This widely acclaimed and
deeply affecting play was, for the women, both an exercise in raising awareness
and a form of therapy to cope with the trauma they endured.

This “theatre of
the oppressed” communicates and renders visible in a unique fashion, the kinds
of knowledge and experience that is all too often obscured from the public
agenda. These Romani women have now emerged as powerful self-advocates facing
the media in their efforts, not only to fight for compensation, but also to
ensure that no other women ever endure such maltreatment and abuse at the hands
of medical professionals or state authorities.

Bernard
Rorke was born in Dublin and has lived in Budapest since 1997. He has an MSc in
Politics and Sociology from Birkbeck College, University of London and a PhD
from the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster. He has
been active on Roma issues for over 15 years, and currently works as advocacy
officer for the ERRC and teaches Roma Rights at the Central European
University, Budapest.

Marek Szilvasi is Head of Research and Human Rights Education at the European Roma Rights Centre in Budapest. He holds an MA in Sociology and Philosophy from the Palacky University Olomouc, an MA in European Studies from the University of Groningen and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Aberdeen. Marek previously worked with the Secretariats of the Decade of Roma Inclusion and the European Sociological Association (ESA).

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